Via Campus Reform:
A widely-used online writing and grammar resource for college students suggests that they find alternatives to words like “mankind” and “mailman” because such terms are “sexist.”
The Purdue University Online Writing Lab (OWL) offers a handout titled “Stereotypes and Biased Language”—which was updated just last week—that encourages students to “avoid using language that is stereotypical or biased in any way,” adding that biased language frequently occurs based on gender, “but can also offend groups of people based on sexual orientation, ethnicity, political interest, or race.”
“Writing in a non-sexist, non-biased way is both ethically sound and effective,” the OWL advises. “Non-sexist writing is necessary for most audiences; if you write in a sexist manner and alienate much of your audience from your discussion, your writing will be much less effective.”
The guide then provides examples for the “Generic Use” of non-sexist language, noting that “although MAN in its original sense carried the dual meaning of adult human and adult male, its meaning has come to be so closely identified with adult male that the generic use of MAN and other words with masculine markers should be avoided.”
Hence, instead of writing “mankind,” the OWL suggests that students write “humanity,” people,” or “human beings.”